rst bars of the new song set one full heart
beating, so that the earlier words were lost upon his brain.

"She ran before me in the meads;
And down this world-worn track
She leads me on; but while she leads
She never gazes back.

"And yet her voice is in my dreams,
To witch me more and more;
That wooing voice! Ah me, it seems
Less near me than of yore.

"Lightly I sped when hope was high,
And youth beguiled the chase;
I follow--follow still; but I
Shall never see her Face."

So the song ended; and in the ultimate quiet the need of speech came
over Stingaree.

"'The Unrealized Ideal,'" he informed a neighbor.

"Rather!" rejoined the man, treating the stale news as a mere remark.
"We never let her off without that."

"I suppose not," said Stingaree.

"It's the song the bushranger forced her to sing at the back-block
concert, and it made her fortune! Good old Stingaree! By the way, I
heard somebody behind me say he had escaped. That can't be true?"

"The newsboys were yelling it as I came along late."

"Well," said Stingaree's neighbor, "if he has escaped, and I for one
don't hope he hasn't, this is where he ought to be. Just the sort of
thing he'd do, too. Good old sportsman, Stingaree!"

It was an embarrassing compliment, eye to eye and foot to foot, wedged
in a crowd. The bushranger did not fish for any more; neither did he
wait to hear Hilda Bouverie sing again, though this cost him much. But
he had one more word with his neighbor before he went.

"You don't happen to know where she's staying, I suppose? I've met her
once or twice, and I might call."

The other smiled as on some suicidal moth.

"There's only one place good enough for a star like her in Sydney."

"And that is?"

"Government House."

II

His Excellency of the moment was a young nobleman of sporting
proclivities and your true sportsman's breadth of mind. He was immensely
popular with all sects and sections but the aggressively puritanical and
the narrowly austere. He graced the theatre with his constant presence,
the Turf with his own horses. His entertainment was lavish, and in
quality far above the gubernatorial average. Late life and soul of
exalted circle, he was hide-bound by few of the conventional trammels
that distinguished the older type of peer to which the Colonies had been
accustomed. It was the obvious course for such a Governor and his
kindred lady to i